Deadwood and Shakespeare: The Henriad in the Old West. Susan Cosby Ronnenberg. 2018.
Nonfiction. Literary criticism. Television and pop culture studies. Interdisciplinary literary/historical studies.
Deadwood and Shakespeare examines HBO’s lawless frontier camp (Deadwood 2004-2006, 2019) alongside Shakespeare’s Henriad. The author explores how both narratives expose the raw, chaotic mechanics of political power formation as well as the way myths about national origin are forged.
This is a scholarly examination that analyses the Elizabethan dialogue of Shakespeare’s plays alongside the often profane pseudo-Western dialogue created for Deadwood by David Milch. In doing so, she concludes that they compare favourably and they are part of the same literary tradition.
Indeed, a central point of this study is to demonstrate that, in spite of its rough appearance (to the untrained eye), Milch’s work is on par with that of The Bard. By mixing anachronistic modern profanity with the cliched language of Hollywood Westerns and structuring much of it in iambic pentameter, Milch created a masterpiece of TVs golden age.
If you know anything about me, you know that I concur with Crosby Ronnenberg’s primary thesis. Heartily.
My own work is heavily influenced by both Milch and Shakespeare. Chapter 31 of The Last Coffle is about as close to Deadwood fanfic as I have ever written. And my own use of Blank Verse in the same story is prolific.
Not only do I admire what Milch was trying to accomplish. But I am doing my best to carry this tradition forward into the future.
AUTHORS – I write short book reviews that focus on voice and vibe. They are useful to querying authors searching for comp titles. There are more like this on my website.